A week ago I posted some thoughts I had as I was partway through the game. I completed the game late last night (stayed up far too long to do so) and I thought I would make note of some of my thoughts. If you thought that one was a wall of text...
I'll arrange this into a few sections: Gameplay, Aesthetics, Characters, and Narrative.
Gameplay
It's funny; I delayed in picking this game up despite my love of Kojima because I heard it described as "a game where you walk around the world and put down ladders and build bridges for other people to use". Having completed the game, I can't say the general sentiment is inaccurate, but it certainly buried the lede. And yet, at the same time, the parts I enjoyed really were those same 'boring' elements. While the encounters with BTs or MULEs were tense and enjoyable, I vastly preferred hiking, hauling, climbing, and watching the cutscenes. Two weeks ago, if you had told me that I would be annoyed when I had to fight enemies or see ghosts because I wanted to get back to hauling cargo across a landscape, I would've thought you insane. But that brings me to the real value of this game, I think: the world and the immersion. The experience of hiking across the desolate landscape, especially as the music kicks in and the camera pans out, is one no other game has ever given me.
The feeling of contributing to the reconstruction of others and helping/being helped by others was great, though. Coming across a generator or timefall shelter or well-placed ladder was a godsend, and completing the road across the majority of the main area was not only a triumph but also tremendously useful, and I was grateful for the help offered by internet people every time I drove across it.
Overall, I do think this was an incredible game, marred only by a few narrative and gameplay rough spots. As I've mentioned, I would normally be annoyed by a game with so many cutscenes, but in this case I actually really enjoyed them. That said, I considered whether the game would be the same if watched as a film, and I don't think it would--a lot of the game's impact comes from the juxtaposition of the story and the long stretches of hiking or hauling. The need to balance the cargo during the hike really lends to the immersion, and the rumbling of the controller and animations as Sam steps over rocks or stutter-steps his way down a hill really brings the feeling of hiking to life.
The shooting/action scenes were never my favourite; I did like the innovation of the reticle showing when your shots would hit a nearby wall instead of your target, but otherwise I found the shooting rather lackluster, if serviceable. The combat wasn't difficult (for the most part)--despite playing on Hard the entire game, I don't think I ever lost a fistfight, or even got punched more than once or twice. But that said, that's not the point of the game, and I think criticizing the combat mechanics in Death Stranding is a bit like criticizing the combat in Minecraft: they both have combat to lend spice and tension to the game, but that's not what they're focused around. It's a garnish of sorts, meant to add spice but not to be a main focus.
That said, while I liked the idea of the Cliff fights, I do think they were a bit harsh/poorly implemented. Having to go all the way back to the beginning of the level if I got caught by an unlucky shot (or more than once I would be hiding behind cover and the enemy bullets would hit me through a wall) was frustrating, and I do admit that after dying to wall-ignoring bullets several times I turned down the difficulty in the first one just to get through the level.
As far as BT boss fights are concerned, I think they had a sort of reversed difficulty. If I were designing the game, I would want to make them threatening and intimidating, but short enough that that the player doesn't get weary or bored, as both of those emotions are the exact opposite of fear and anxiety. I never felt challenged by the boss fights, just eventually getting annoyed by the tedium. Their health bars felt too large and the combat was relatively uninteractive. In fact, as I fought the space whale at the end of chapter 14, my friend who was watching me actually commented on how I seemed to just be shooting endlessly at a relatively-harmless-seeming flying whale. Each time it fired a laser or dropped BTs, I would sidestep or wade my way to another platform then continue firing at it until I ran out of ammo. The most difficult part of the boss battles was getting enough ammunition to wear them down.
If I were to design the fights, I think I would have made them a bit more like gauntlets or environmental challenges, similar to the Ancient Wyvern in Dark Souls 3. Facing them head-on would be near-suicide, so instead Sam would be forced to keep on the move, avoid getting hit, and eventually drive them off or wait them out. Maybe Higgs would be the target: as we avoid the BT we have to land a few blows/shots on him as he runs about the area, mocking us, until he decides he's had enough and leaves, at which point the BT disappears or we can get out of its range. At the very least, I would turn down the health of the bosses, as the last thing I want the player to do is get comfortable with the monsters.
That said, I do think the designs of all of them were great. The giant colossus that Higgs imprisoned Amelie in was equal parts creepy, cool, and intimidating (especially the roar) and the space whale was as majestic as it was unnerving. The lion/wolf thing's head being comprised of hands and opening up was also quite creative.
Aesthetics
What more can I say about this game but that it's bloody gorgeous? If there's one area this game absolutely nails, it's the graphics. The environment looked nearly photorealistic and the character models were so lifelike I wager I could show a cutscene and convince someone it was a video of the actual actors. The graphics team really outdid themselves. As far as the overall aesthetics of the game go, I can't complain about anything. The colours were all muted and a nice juxtaposition of lush verdancy and black desolation. The repeated motifs of hands and strands were pretty neat too.
Music: great. Can't really say much more. Really nailed the feel of the world and each time the music came on and the camera pulled back I got excited.
Characters
The characters are the game's second-biggest strength, after the world itself. I really did like each of them, though I felt some of them were treated a bit inconsistently or stumbled towards the end of the game. Otherwise, the names. My god, the names. On-the-nose barely begins to describe it. Hilarious.
- Sam: I really liked him. As I mentioned previously, I liked the change of pace in protagonist: his brusqueness is a flavour that we don't get often, and I empathised with him in his disliking of physical contact, which I think helped connect me with the character. I thought his sudden getting of of his phobia towards the end of the game came out of nowhere, though, and I do wish that it was introduced a bit more gradually. Norman Reedus did a fantastic job as Sam, though. His voice and expressions were both amazing.
- Fragile: was close to being my favourite side character. Like I said, I have a soft spot for characters who befriend/pry standoffish characters out of their shells. Her story was neat, but I wish it had a bit more twists or layers. Even so, "Fragile, but not that fragile" is a great tagline for her.
- Deadman: I wasn't sure about him at first, but I grew to like him. His eager goofiness was uncomfortably realistic at times (I've known a few people exactly like that) but I think overall I had about the same opinion of him that Sam would have: a decent guy who doesn't understand personal space. I found his reveal to be the weakest: him being a test tube baby didn't really seem as deeply tied to death as all the others. I wish they would've leaned more into the 'has the organs of the dead' as that seems more narratively fertile.
- Mama: I was expecting her to play a bigger role, and she delivered. I'd say she was the other candidate for favourite side character, both due to her voice actress and her storyline. I think of all the side characters, her relationships with death and birth were the most interesting and emotionally resonant. The baby BT was really something.
- Heartman: I'd say he was probably my least favourite, though that's more just because I found him a bit dull. I'm not sure if it was his lines or delivery, but it seemed like he lacked the emotion that so many other characters brought to the story. He felt a bit one-note emotionally-speaking, which is a shame as his story is a pretty interesting one.
- Die-Hardman: The game kept trying to get me to distrust him, which I felt was poorly done. All it really amounted to was him wearing a skull mask and Deadman saying "don't trust him" every now and again. I was wary at the beginning, but quickly came to trust him despite the game trying to get me not to, as I saw no actual reason to suspect him of any malice. His breakdown at the end was moving but felt out of place, though I really liked his role in the Cliff/BB story at the end (I'll discuss that under narratives).
- Amelie: honestly never really liked her. She felt too much like a MacGuffin at the beginning, showing up a la Leia and saying "come rescue me!" before disappearing again, and I couldn't quite nail down if she was Sam's sister or wife/love interest until the very, very end of the game. It seemed like a sister relationship but there were some weird romantic overtones to a lot of their scenes and phrasing. I also couldn't make heads or tails of her motives. It seemed to go 'connect everyone' to 'I want to end the world' to 'why didn't you stop me from ending the world, grr' to 'okay I won't end the world'.
- Higgs: the only character I can say I disliked. Intimidating at first, but quickly seemed to devolve into a bog-standard "creepy end of the world doomsday worshipper". His licking people, treating everything like a game, tattooing his forehead with the chiral network code...it all felt cliche and unoriginal in a game that had so many fresh ideas.
Narrative
If there's one place where Death Stranding stumbles, I think it's the narrative structure. The overall story of the game is pretty simple: go west, hook up the internet for everyone, do fetch quests on the way. The backstory involving BBs, Cliff, and Bridget seems like it should've been relatively simple in the end, but was clouded by a density of jargon and technobabble about Beaches, which was further compounded by constant out-of-sequence flashbacks that made it difficult to follow. Not that I couldn't, or that I didn't piece it mostly together later, but I think it would've been a lot stronger of a story if the order/way in which it was told was smoothed out a bit.
I also felt like there were a number of reveals that were already clear or obvious. John was explicitly revealed to be the one who killed Cliff well after it was obvious, while the relationship between Sam, Cliff, and Cliff's BB was murky and not clearly told. Maybe that was on purpose, but I feel like it was more down to a failure of narrative structure than deliberate obfuscation. Bridget's motives (and Higgs', for that matter) also seemed handwavy. I suppose she decided that it was better to end things quickly than to draw out the extinction but that's a massive change in objective that was just breezed over, not to mention told well out of sequence, which only made it harder to figure out. Overall the lore seems more poorly-told than deliberately-opaque, which is annoying because I think it could've been a neat story.
I'll also mention that it seems like the game had one or two more motifs than it really needed. I don't think the use of hands as a motif ever came into play--if the chiral crystals were just 'crystals' and hands showed up as a design theme in the BTs/on Sam's body I don't think anything would have changed. Similarly (and I know this is a weird thing to be unable to get past) the Timefall still bothers me. It feels like it's disconnected from everything else, and the role it plays in the story would be entirely unchanged if it were just acidic rain. In fact it would probably actually make more sense overall: the physics of how the water accelerates time really gets confusing after a while. Why does it age people instead of just causing their skin to turn to dust where it touches? Why does it rust metal, when it seems like a lot of the stuff is made from carbon fiber or stainless steel, which doesn't rust? Just make it acid rain, and everything makes sense, and we don't have to add this odd time-dilation mechanic that doesn't really connect to anything in the plot.
I've wondered if it's a metaphor of some sort (Kojima loves an obvious metaphor) but if that's the case, I don't think it was used or explored enough to warrant being in the story. It should've either been more relevant to the story or replaced.
Conclusion
Overall, Death Stranding is a great game. Would I recommend it? For sure, but only to those people who I think would enjoy it. This is very much a love-it-or-hate-it game, but either way I'd say that if one is interested in it they should play it, as watching a Let's Play or the cutscenes might seem to get across the story but will fall well short of getting across the core experience.
Will I continue to play now that I've made it through all the credits and story? I honestly don't know. Let me know if I should or if there's not much more to do. Thanks for reading my rant, and congratulations on getting through this.
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